Planning the future at ‘Connect and Collaborate’ webinars

Never has the need for the industry to pull together and collaborate as in these unprecedented times in order to discover the best path to a speedy recovery. Sharing experiences, learnings and best practice as we navigate our way through this turbulent time is the only way forward.

When lockdown happened, we felt a responsibility to do everything we could to pull together some of the best minds in the industry. Our objective, to unite and discuss some of the big issue challenges that lay ahead through our Connect and Collaborate webinars. By uniting the experience of a broad and eclectic list of clients, consultants, suppliers and industry friends to work together in sharing their learnings and opinion had to be beneficial.

In recent weeks we’ve held 10 webinars bringing these influential industry leaders together to discuss pertinent topics born from this crisis. The output from each webinar was then summarised and shared with the contributors as well as making the conscious decision to allow free access to the discussions through our website for anyone who wants to read and glean from our learnings.

The focus and subject matter chosen for each webinar has been about looking to the future and supporting our clients as they look to return safely, in whatever guise that may be.

From the humble beginnings in Webinar #1 – working out the true implications of Covid-19 to Webinar #5 – discussing the newly adopted web-based technology that will support our clients and customers in getting back to work and enjoying our great food. It’s true to say the speed of change would not have happened if collaboration was not in play and embraced by all.

Webinar #1 – Challenges to getting back to work safely

This initial webinar focused on the initiatives required to maintain the safety of our team and our customers. Taking key learnings from other global locations who were further down the path of during the pandemic

Webinar #2 – The new normal in contract catering

What will the new catering and hospitality potentially look like and what are the barriers to delivery.

Webinar #3 – Food offer- themes and customer wants

This was all about food and how we can still deliver creative ways to maintain the choice of fresh food they’ve always been used to

Webinar #4 – Preparing the supply chain for re-opening

Our supply chain partners are vital to our business and understanding from them first-hand how they’ve been affected and how they saw the future was important.

Webinar #5 – Remobilising safely and successfully

With green shoots of return appearing, this was an opportunity for our clients who’ve already returned to lead a discussion on how positively the catering has been received and the measures required.

The information gathered from every one of our webinars has been invaluable and the feedback has been immensely rewarding, especially knowing we have all been collectively supporting our industry to return. The culture of bm is without doubt one of total collaboration and partnerships and these webinars have been a true testament to this.

It is our full intention to continue our Connect and Collaborate webinars even after the current challenges have passed. You may ask yourself why? Well, we see them as a way to open up the conversation around how we can future proof our industry and support our clients as things invariably change.

5 reasons why collaboration is so important

1. It helps solve problems
2. Collaboration brings people (and organisations) closer together
3. Collaboration helps people learn from each other
4. It opens channels of communication
5. Collaboration makes us more efficient

If you would like a copy of the output of the webinars or would like to join any of our webinars, please contact us.